The following is a memorandum from the business manager of a television station.
“Over the past year, our late-night news program has devoted increased time to national news and less time to weather and local news. During this time period, most of the complaints received from viewers were concerned with our station’s coverage of weather and local news. In addition, local businesses that used to advertise during our late-night news program have just canceled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to the program and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level.”
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence would be needed in order to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
In the memorandum from the business manager of a television station, it is stated that restoring the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level, will attract more viewers to the program as well as improve the revenue from advertising. The manager has come to this conclusion based on the assumption that viewers complaints about insufficient coverage of weather and local news is specifically for the late night news program and advertisers canceling the contract is solely due to less time for weather and local news in late night news program. However, before this argument can be properly evaluated, three specific evidences must be warranted.
Firstly, the manager assumes that complaints received by the viewers were specifically regarding the late night news program. News might be broadcast-ed multiple times over the day and perhaps these complaints are about some other time period of news program and not necessarily late night news program. Maybe viewers wish to know about local and weather news in the morning time and about national news in late night before retiring to bed. Manager has to provide more specific evidence regarding the program timing for the complaints from viewers else the conclusion drawn in the original argument is significantly weakened.
Secondly, it is assumed that advertising contracts are cancelled due to less time to weather and local news in late night program. Perhaps, the advertisers cancelled due to a controversy in the content of the program broadcast-ed or maybe due to insufficient funds. The cancellation could also be a result of contentious business relationship with the broadcasting company. There are plethora of reasons for advertisement cancellation and narrowing it down to insufficient coverage for news and weather without any proper evidence will considerably weaken the argument.
Thirdly, it is assumed that the late night program is deliberately allocating less time for weather and local news compared to national news. Perhaps, in the past year there have been many pressing national events occurring compared to the local events, which needs more coverage and attention. Thus, increasing the time for local news and weather at the expense of cutting down the pith content of national news, might languish the number of viewers and advertisers. If the above is proven to be true with evidence, then the argument does not hold water.
In conclusion, the argument as it stands now is considerably flawed due to its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. If the manager is able to provide more evidence for the assumptions stated above (perhaps in the form of systematic research study), then it will be possible to fully evaluate the viability of the proposed recommendation to devote more time for weather and local news in late night program.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 454 350
No. of Characters: 2343 1500
No. of Different Words: 188 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.616 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.161 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.794 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 168 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 150 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 93 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 55 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.706 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.769 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.647 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.389 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.586 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.092 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, firstly, however, if, may, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, third, thirdly, thus, well, as to, in conclusion, as well as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 16.0 28.8173652695 56% => OK
Preposition: 66.0 55.5748502994 119% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2391.0 2260.96107784 106% => OK
No of words: 454.0 441.139720559 103% => OK
Chars per words: 5.26651982379 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.61598047577 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.85428646624 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 192.0 204.123752495 94% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.422907488987 0.468620217663 90% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 753.3 705.55239521 107% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 62.1109622071 57.8364921388 107% => OK
Chars per sentence: 140.647058824 119.503703932 118% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.7058823529 23.324526521 114% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.17647058824 5.70786347227 143% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.508290403241 0.218282227539 233% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.189569430419 0.0743258471296 255% => Sentence topic similarity is high.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.153679486576 0.0701772020484 219% => The coherence between sentences is low.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.319961122611 0.128457276422 249% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.12011785384 0.0628817314937 191% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.7 14.3799401198 116% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 36.63 48.3550499002 76% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.6 12.197005988 120% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.58 12.5979740519 108% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.44 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 101.0 98.500998004 103% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 19.0 12.3882235529 153% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.